WAL­TER AL­IBEY

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

wal­ter.al­ibey@guardian.co.tt

Keen ri­val­ries will take cen­tre stage when the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cham­pi­onship takes place from Thurs­day (Feb­ru­ary 20) to Sun­day (Feb­ru­ary 23) at the Na­tion­al Cy­cling Cen­tre (NCC) in Bal­main, Cou­va.

Fans will get more than they bar­gained for, from re­new­ing and ex­pect­ed ri­val­ries that will even­tu­al­ly lead to the se­lec­tion of teams to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the com­ing Elite Pan Amer­i­can Games in April, the Cy­cling In­ter­na­tion­al Grand Prix in April, the Youth Pan Amer­i­can Games in Au­gust, and the Ju­nior Pan Am lat­er this year in June.

The se­lec­tion of teams will be strict­ly time-ori­ent­ed, which means that rid­ers will be re­quired to pro­duce qual­i­fy­ing times to be se­lect­ed. Yes­ter­day, T&T Cy­cling Fed­er­a­tion (TTCF) pres­i­dent Rowe­na Williams said she ex­pects that there will be stiff com­pe­ti­tion over the four days of ac­tion.

Ja­di­an Neaves, a sixth-place fin­ish­er at the 2023 Ju­nior Caribbean Road Cham­pi­onships in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic with a time of 29 min­utes and three sec­onds, who has al­so shown much promise in the en­durance events, emerges from the ju­nior cat­e­go­ry to the elites this year and is ex­pect­ed to pro­duce up­sets.

He will fit in­to a com­pet­i­tive group that will fea­ture Ak­il Camp­bell, who grabbed the coun­try’s first medal at the 2024 Pan Amer­i­can Track Cy­cling Cham­pi­onships at the Velo Sports Cen­tre in Los An­ge­les, Cal­i­for­nia when he placed third in a 13-man Men’s Scratch race, Liam Trepte, the win­ner of last year’s 80K course Road Chal­lenge in one hour and 37 min­utes, and Tariq Woods, who won last year’s 25-kilo­me­tre TTCF Chal­lenge Se­ries, among oth­er rid­ers.

The quar­tet will clash in the open­ing event on Thurs­day at 7 pm and will face off again in the Scratch Race, the Om­ni­um and oth­er en­durance races for the cham­pi­onships.

Rac­ing chair­man Gre­go­ry Dan­drade said there will al­so be key clash­es in the elite men’s and women’s sprints where Olympian Kwe­si Browne, Zion Puli­do, for­mer Olympian Njisane Phillip and Dar­nell James, a ju­nior rid­er who will be mak­ing his de­but in the se­nior elite event.

Among the women, the coun­try’s top two rid­ers Makaira Wal­lace and Pheobe Sandy will square off.

Williams quizzed on her ex­pec­ta­tions at the event told Guardian Me­dia Sports, “I ex­pect that the cy­clists would put out their best foot for­ward. I ex­pect that they will make the qual­i­fy­ing times, and I al­so ex­pect that there will be stiff com­pe­ti­tion over the four days of ac­tion as every­body will be seek­ing a place on the na­tion­al team for in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion soon.”

Like last year, this year’s na­tion­al cham­pi­onships will take place joint­ly with Bar­ba­dos and Suri­name. Williams said she and her fed­er­a­tion agreed to help out their re­gion­al neigh­bours who have been strug­gling to get a cy­cling fa­cil­i­ty for their rid­ers.

“The coun­tries would have made a re­quest to have their na­tion­al cham­pi­onships held joint­ly with ours due to them not hav­ing a track for their na­tion­al cy­clists, so we would have been will­ing to as­sist, just as we did last year with Bar­ba­dos,” Williams said.